Steve Newvine: The end of Pontiac

The federal government's plan to restructure General Motors is designed to improve the finances for the ailing automaker.

The plan also calls for the end of production for the Pontiac line.

While the car guys (and women) are mourning the end of Pontiac, I'll miss that familiar brand for reasons that have little to do with muscle cars such as the Firebird or the GTO.

For my family growing up in Port Leyden, N.Y., during the 1960s and '70s, Pontiac was the family car.

In the mid-60s, my dad brought home a used 1964 Pontiac Bonneville.

From that moment on until after I left home to enter the work force, Pontiacs were part of our household.

I remember that Bonneville.

It was mauve with a white top. Headlights were two to a side and stacked vertically.

It had four doors and lots of legroom no matter where you sat.

It also had, arguably, the largest trunk in the history of auto making.

The cars were big, reliable, powerful and apparently cheap to run (although no one thought much about the price of gas in these days that preceded the Middle East oil embargo of the early 1970s).

I have no idea how big the engine was. All I remember is the Bonneville was able to tow our family camper trailer during our summer outings to the Adirondack Mountains.

The large trunk came in handy, as our family of five would fill it with suitcases for our annual winter trip to visit my grandparents in Florida. That adventure was 3,000 miles round-trip, and the Bonneville got us there and back every year.

Over the years, Dad would replace these late-model used Pontiacs with other Pontiacs. He bought a brand-new Bonneville in 1972.

Not much had changed: four door, big trunk and all the amenities of its predecessors with one new feature: new car smell.

Pontiac was the only car in our driveway when we were a one-car family.

When we became a two-car family as my brother and I got our driver's licenses, we became a two-Pontiac family.

I'll never forget the night I had the family car out past my curfew.

Dad was upset and like most fathers in that era, he let me know it with a good tongue-lashing.

I'll never forget, "It's not like gas is cheap anymore. Why it's 50 cents a gallon!"

What we would give for those days.

As a young family man looking to replace my Toyota pickup, I tried to buy a Pontiac in the 1980s.

I even went as far as to drive into a Pontiac dealership. But once the salesman determined what my price range was, he directed me to a lower-priced used Plymouth Reliant.

I'll mark the passing of the Pontiac line with a little more heartfelt poignancy than I did with the end of such lines as Plymouth Reliant, Oldsmobile, and (thankfully) the AMC Pacer.

The car guys may miss their GTOs, Firebirds, and Grand Ams.

But I'll miss my Dad's Bonneville and all the memories created with it growing up.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced and drives a Chevy Malibu.